Fractal structure

Source: TW

Certain Hindu religious systems, like the great shaiva institutions (both pAshupata and aishAna), were characterized by what might be termed a scale-free network architecture in terms of maTha-s and temples. They had major hubs which were which were connected to smaller hubs and so on finally ending in terminal leaves. These leaves were the small temples in the grAma-s, while examples of hubs were big maTha-shrines like the one at golagi or Amardaka. Such a network structure is susceptible to an attack on the hubs and rather resistant to an attack on the leaves.

Thus, it was quite resistant to snipping at the leaves by bauddha missionaries and local conversions.

However, the marUnmatta assault on India decapitated the big hubs resulting in a collapse of the system.

In contrast, the shaiva-s of the bhairavIya traditions had more distributed networks with a lot of cliques or dense subnetworks. This architecture allowed them to survive as there were not many prominent hubs to hit, and the abundance of cliques allowed dense subgraphs of interaction to continue persisting through the marUnmatta depredations.